Old Sturbridge Village prepares for fall harvest

Thomas NeillHarvesting rutabagas in the Freeman Kitchen Garden at Old Sturbridge village.

There’s more to the fall season than just leaf peeping and the ghosts and goblins of Halloween, especially if you lived in early New England from 1790 to 1840, the time period represented at Old Sturbridge Village.

“The fall harvest was the culmination of seven months of hard work. It was a time when families actually got to bring in the fruits and vegetables they had been tending to, and this was a time when they would be eating the best,” said Rhys Simmons, coordinator of agriculture and men’s crafts at OSV.

“This was also a time for celebration back then, and there would have been harvest parties and harvest festivals and a celebratory atmosphere after seeing what all your hard work had brought you for the year,” he added. To celebrate the harvest season both past and present, Old Sturbridge Village will hold its annual old-fashioned Harvest Days weekend on October 15-16.

During the daylong events, visitors can see the ox-powered cider mill in action on Saturday, take part in hands-on crafts, tour the root cellar, and help with old-time harvest activities such as threshing and winnowing grain, shelling corn and beans, churning butter, and putting a herb garden “to bed” for the winter.

With no refrigeration, preserving the newly-harvested food was an important element of the season to ensure that families had enough to eat throughout the winter and spring. During Harvest days, OSV visitors can learn about food preservation methods used in the 1800s and how they can be applied today.

“We will be taking visitors on a tour of a fairly small root cellar under the Freeman House where there are 10 bins filled with sand at the proper moisture level so that the vegetables don’t dry out. And we will be talking about how early New Englanders would prepare and stack the vegetables in their root cellar so as to get the most possible in there,” said Simmons.

Visitors can also get into all the harvest action by helping to pull up root vegetables and by picking apples using19th-century methods. They can also taste some of the nearly 100 antique apple varieties – most not available in today’s supermarkets - being preserved in the Old Sturbridge Village orchards.

Two heirloom varieties grown at OSV that visitors will have an opportunity to try are Sheep’s Nose and Mother apples.

“I actually had an 80-year-old women, who remembered having these apples as a child, call me to be sure we’d be featuring them again this year during our festival,” said Simmons.

“Cider was the most popular table beverage of the time and these varieties, which didn’t peak until early to mid-October, were higher in sugar content. That was important because the higher the sugar content, then the higher the alcohol content and the longer the cider would last,” he added.

Also, OSV farmers will be grinding apples at the Cider Mill on Saturday and pressing the pulp for its juice on Sunday.

The celebration of the season will also feature special Harvest Party on Oct. 14 from 6 to 9 p.m. The evening fun at OSV will include horse drawn hayrides, celtic storytellers spinning their tales around a bonfire, and the opportunity to stroll the village’s countryside where visitors can enjoy the spectacular site of OSV’s Fire on the Mill Pond along with a performance by Hickory Strings.

Tickets for the special party are $12, $10 for OSV members, and free to children under age 3.